The only cases where formal proof of theorems seem to have had actual mathematical value is for theorems that require checking a very large number of case, so much so that no human can be fully certain that no mistakes were made. Some examples:
A good explanation of how this insane system came up is given at Video "History of Oxford University by Chris Day (2018)".
As if it weren't enough, there are also the 6 Halls: permanent private hall.
The colleges are controlled by its fellows, a small self-electing body of highly successful scholars, usually in the dozens per college number it seems. Each college also usually has different types of fellows, e.g. see he university college page: www.univ.ox.ac.uk/about/college-fellowships/ (archive)
The college system does has its merits though, as it instates a certain sense of Hogwarts "belonging" to a certain group, so it might help students get better support for their learning projects from older students, or through the tutoring system. Of course, all such "belonging" feelings are bad, the correct thing would be to make great online tutorials for all, and answer questions in the open. But oh well, humans are dumb.
The college you are in impacts the quality of your courses, because tutorials are per-college. As of 2023, Ciro Santilli spoke to some students of the Computer science course of the University of Oxford, and was told that in some cases where you don't have anyone who can give the tutorial, you instead get a "class", i.e. a P.h.D. student going through question sheets with no interaction in the C.S. department, rather than a deep interactive discussion over the college fire. How can this system be so broken, it is beyond belief
This functionality is somewhat related to fraternities and sororities in 2000's United States.
Set (mathematics) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Intuitively: unordered container where all the values are unique, just like C++ std::set.
More precisely for set theory formalization of mathematics:
  • everything is a set, including the elements of sets
  • string manipulation wise:
    • {} is an empty set. The natural number 0 is defined as {} as well.
    • {{}} is a set that contains an empty set
    • {{}, {{}}} is a set that contains two sets: {} and {{}}
    • {{}, {}} is not well formed, because it contains {} twice
Injective function by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Mnemonic: in means into. So we are going into a codomain that is large enough so that we can have a different image for every input.
Function by signature by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
In this section we classify some functions by the type of inputs and outputs they take and produce.
Is the only atom that has a closed form solution, which allows for very good predictions, and gives awesome intuition about the orbitals in general.
It is arguably the most important solution of the Schrodinger equation.
In particular, it predicts:
The explicit solution can be written in terms of spherical harmonics.
Video 1.
A Better Way To Picture Atoms by minutephysics (2021)
Source. Renderings based on the exact Schrödinger equation solution for the hydrogen atom that depict wave function concentration by concentration of small balls, and angular momentum by how fast the balls rotate at each point. Mentions that the approach is inspired by de Broglie-Bohm theory.
Crystal radio by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This was the first generation of commercially successful radios.
It uses a crystal detector as its diode, which is a crucial element of the radio, thus its name.
They were superseded by transistor radios, which were much more reliable, portable and could amplify the signal received.
Video 1.
How a Crystal radio Works by RimstarOrg
. Source.
Order (algebra) by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
The order of a algebraic structure is just its cardinality.
Sometimes, especially in the case of structures with an infinite number of elements, it is often more convenient to talk in terms of some parameter that characterizes the structure, and that parameter is usually called the degree.

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
  2. local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:
    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact